Building a more competitive and sustainable construction industry in Europe using BIM standards

A first milestone in Building Information Model (BIM) in European standardization was reached with the adoption of the first three European Standards. On 26 October CEN/TC 442 on BIM met in Madrid to set the ground for further standardization work in this field.

A way of structuring building information

It refers to the use of a shared digital representation of a built object to facilitate the construction process including buildings, bridges, roads, process plants. BIM facilitates design, construction and operation processes to form a reliable basis for decisions.

CEN/TC 442, which secretariat is held by our Norwegian Member, SN, has for scope to develop methodologies to define, describe, exchange, monitor, record and securely handle asset data, semantics and processes.Picture copyright Newton @ BIM is More Magazine

As first action, CEN/TC 442 adopted three International Standards as European ones:

The adoption of these standards was made possible thanks to the close collaboration with our international counterpart, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), formalized through the Vienna Agreement.

In particular EN ISO 16739:2016 is essential for the development of future BIM standardization work adding the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) to the CEN catalogue.

Working Groups are now starting to develop new standardization work to complement the above-mentioned European Standards. Doing so, we can address European specificities such as the Construction Products Regulation (CPR, pdf format).

In the frame of CEN/TC 442 third meeting in Madrid the BIM Community, a Spanish information platform on BIM, interviewed CEN and CENELEC Programme Manager, Alexandre Beltrão, and Tomi Henttinen, representing our Finnish Member SFS within CEN/TC 422. Watch the interview!

The construction industry is one of the largest European industries (10% of the GDP of the EU and 20 million jobs). European standardization through BIM related work makes sure we keep them on track with the digitalization of the world!